Michigan Passes Law To Protect Social Network Accounts Of Employees From Employers

Earlier this year you might recall that there was an incident where a teacher’s aide had been fired because she refused to hand over her Facebook login credentials to her employers. This lead to the state of Maryland banning employers from asking employees access to their social network accounts, and it looks like other states such as Delaware, Illinois and California have since followed suit. Now it looks like hopping aboard the bandwagon would be the state of Michigan where Governor Rick Snyder signed the House Bill 5523, stating that “potential employees and students should be judged on their skills and abilities, not private online activity.” The bill also states that those who breach this new law can be fined $1,000 and even face up to 93 days in jail.

There has been some debate in the past as to what sort of photos and information should go up on a social network. Some companies like to maintain a certain image and are pretty strict at the sort of content their employees post on their social network accounts, even requesting access to a potential employee’s Facebook account to “check them out”, but it’s good to see that the government is taking action in the protection of the rights and privacy of employees and students on social networks.